Using poetry and the arts to advocate for a world without HIV or AIDS

Poem 354 ± May 23, 2016

May 23, 2016

j.lewissome afternoon

he is gone, he is gone
news travels fast, and faster
when it is hard to bear
i feel a forming thunder-cloud
prediction of the flood to come
not so much sorrow for the dead
as for the living left alone
who will turn some afternoon
to share a thought or laugh
before the embarrassed pain
when he is not where we expect him

it took me years past her dying
to stop thinking
i must share this or that
with mother, she will laugh
and ask for repetitions

we miss them every one
those who go but not completely
walking the halls and corners of our minds
quietly waiting those moments
those unexpected afternoons
when we address them with
a sentence, a song, a sudden smile
before reality descends and covers them
in drapes of sad remembering

j.lewis’s poems have appeared in EXPOUND, The Gnarled Oak, Spark, and other journals as well as in a number of anthologies. His poetry collection, a clear day in october, is forthcoming from Empire & Great Jones Little Press.